Twitter Paid $6 or Less for Crowdsourced ‘Birdie’ Graphic

The bird on Twitter’s home page, familiar to millions, is small, cute and fun, and implies communication and anticipation. One might say it’s the perfect graphic for Twitter. Yet the company paid its designer at most $6, without attribution.

Some designers claim crowdsourcing is evil because it devalues their work by driving down prices, allowing amateurs into the game and forcing people to work "on spec," meaning that they don’t get paid unless their design is chosen. Others see it as a natural evolution driven by supply, demand and technology.

Simon Oxley, the Japan-based Brit who licensed the bird graphic to Twitter for the price of a sandwich, through iStockphoto, sits somewhere in the middle.

"I
am not sure [whether crowdsourcing hurts designers]," he said via e-mail. "I believe a designer can only be ‘hurt’ when they stand in line — instead of constantly seeking new inspiration and producing new things with their ever-increasing experiences."

Fair enough. But since Twitter, which now ranks above Digg as the 84th most popular website in the world according to Hitwise, doesn’t sell any merchandise depicting the bird or use it as their official logo (it’s considered a "decorative element"), the company only had to pay Oxley his share of iStockphoto’s licensing fee.

An iStockphoto spokeswoman told wired.com that Twitter paid between $10 and $15 for Oxley’s bird design. Considering that iStockphoto pays 20 or 40 percent to content creators depending on their membership, Oxley made somewhere between $2 and $6 for designing the Twitter homepage graphic. Carolyn Davidson, who famously earned only $35 for designing the Nike swoosh, actually made out pretty well by comparison.

Oxley says didn’t even realize Twitter was using his design until a staffer contacted him about a year ago for permission to animate the bird, which he gladly granted. "I was happy to see the image ‘in-action’ as they say on iStockphoto, back when
Twitter wasn’t well known," said Oxley. "I did ask that a credit be added to the
Twitter page mentioning that I had conceived the bird."

No such credit ever appeared, and according to iStockphoto, Twitter is not obligated to credit Oxley because they’re not using his design in an editorial context.

Still, the father of Twitter birdie enjoys the notoriety his creation has achieved. "It is great to see the bird on the CNN news and BBC site — my family in the UK even mentioned seeing it on the TV news," he said. "I have also had people write telling me they have reproduced the image on the walls of their children’s bedroom, and a girl had it tattooed onto her back quite large."

Twitter’s use of the design is consistent with iStockphoto’s terms, so Oxley doesn’t feel short-changed. Nonetheless the erstwhile start-up’s strategy of paying peanuts for its homepage design could backfire.

Unlike Twitter’s "fail whale" graphic, which the company purchased outright after it appeared on iStockphoto, Oxley’s bird design remains on the site where it can be licensed under the same terms Twitter received. Nothing is stopping people from making sites that ape, mock or build upon Twitter using its own official graphic.